In the past cumulativeness in natural science was entirely recognized by the main scientists. For example Newton wrote: If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
However Kuhn (1962), in his book on The structure of scientific revolutions, rejected this notion for the natural sciences. He wrote: The transition from a paradigm in crisis to a new one from which a new tradition of normal science can emerge is far from a cumulative process, one achieved by an articulation or extension of the old paradigm. However many researchers and philosophers rejected his approach (see for example Agazzi (1985) paper on commensurability, incommensurability and cumulativity in scientific knowledge.
A recent book published in French in 2009: La cumulativité du savoir en sciences sociales, Walliser ed., permitted to examine this problem for different social sciences: economy, sociology, demography, linguistics, archaeology, anthropology, history, human geography, with papers from two philosophers. The answers were very different according to the considered science. You will find here the English translation of the paper on demography.
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